Marilyn Writes

Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 year banking career, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, and other major industry publications. The American Bankers Association (ABA) published Barnewall’s Profitable Private Banking: the Complete Blueprint, in 1987. She taught private banking at Colorado University for the ABA and trained private bankers in Singapore.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Swamps, Deep States, And Core Problems, Part 2

Jul 16, 2017

By Marilyn M. Barnewall

It felt so good yesterday afternoon! The Republican
National Committee (RNC) called at precisely the wrong time (for them) and the
totally right time for me.

They were calling for donations. In a soft, positive
voice, I told the young man that until the Republican Party can pass a program
that gets government out of our health care, I don’t have a dime to send
them. I further explained that since the Republicans in Congress have had
seven years to figure out how to repeal Obamacare and haven’t been able to, I
do not think they are using contributions sent to the RNC to find the brightest
candidates. Rather, it appears to me that the candidates who got and get
the most support are those the RNC can manipulate to vote as the RNC wants.

I made one final comment about not having one penny
available for Republicans who cannot support our Republican President. I
then thanked the man (calling from Washington, D.C.), told him to have a nice
evening and hung up. I rather doubt they will be calling me back.

The purpose of this article is to tell you of an action I’ve
decided to take and it might interest you, also… an action that will help empty
the swamp in Washington, D.C, give you your nation back, cost you no money, and
take only about an hour of your time.

(By the way, regarding health care and politics: Until
Obamacare — excluding Medicaid and Medicare — government was not involved in our
health care and the care for a majority of citizens the care was excellent. And
that’s the problem… the Republicans want government to stay involved for the
obvious skimming profit off the top reasons but can only do that if they repeal
AND replace Obamacare. Isn’t that really what this argument is all
about? REPEAL the darned thing and forget replacing it! Let the
marketplace replace it!)

Let’s start with the truth. For those of you who have
difficulty with that, I refer you to the Bible, Timothy 2 Chapter 4 Verse 1 and
Thessalonians Chapter 2 Verse 9-12. They talk about how, in the end
times, people who do not seek the Truth (remember, Christ told us HE is the
way, the Truth and the life) will be unable to tolerate hearing it and will
thus be unable to deal with facts.

I’m talking about both political parties, not just
Democrats/liberals/ progressives. Republicans who say they are
conservative don’t have a clue what conservative philosophy means… they think
it is an ideology rather than a philosophy. Conservatism is a philosophy
based on the principles of seeking truth and facts. Conservatives are
constitutionalists who respect the Rule of Law that flows from the Constitution
of the United States and their own State Constitution. People who understand conservatism also
understand that the Constitution is like the Bible. You do not get to
pick and choose which parts you like and discard the rest.

To be honest, there are not many people who are
conservative. There are a lot who think they are and even more who say
they are. They are not.

Both political parties have so abused the power we gave them
and this article tells you how I intend to help collapse these two corporate
entities… yes, both the RNC and the DNC are corporations and can be
dissolved. And that’s what this article is about: How to remove the
power base of these two organizations. We need to start from the
beginning.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Democrat
National Committee (DNC) did not always collect money to elect
candidates. We used to find and recruit our own candidates and give our
financial support directly to the candidate.

One day the RNC and DNC said “Send your money to us and
we’ll find the best candidates for you… candidates who believe what you believe
and who will vote to support a platform that will be approved by all Democrats
(or Republicans). We’ll make sure candidates have the money they need to get
elected.” State parties said the same.

Political candidates said “Great idea!”
Availability of funds was more certain and made planning for
advertising easier. Those are good things. Being indebted to a
political party and dependent upon it for re-election funds, however, is not
good.

Candidates are under the thumb of those who finance their
re-election campaign and the parties have a view of the political world that
may be (usually is) quite different from that of candidates and voters.
The easy solution to this problem is term limits which keeps politicians from
making a career out of being elected to office. It was never intended for
politics to be anyone’s career!

Voters said, “Great idea!” Rather than sending money
to individual candidates, we sent it (many still send it) to the RNC or the
DNC, local, state, and federal. Instead of going to political meetings,
we spend time with our families. That’s a good thing, right? It’s a
good thing unless the group giving you the time to relax is stealing your
country by putting people in office that they, the party, control and those who
run the party want to take away your sovereignty and give you one world
government.

We enabled those who select our political candidates (for
both parties) to select people whose past histories or current temperaments
make them susceptible to blackmail… perhaps they have a drug or sex
addiction. It appears the RNC’s and DNC’s number one qualification
for candidate selection is “easily manipulated.” They sought candidates
that want the power and public recognition that goes with the title Senator or
Congressman, but do not particularly care what they vote for or against.

Both Parties provide political training for candidates when
they actually became candidates… after winning a primary, or whatever.
And attending these training classes is how those who run for office learn to
obey. They become “Young Pro-Lifers” or some other groupie name when they
graduate.

Why would political parties seek weak candidates who can be
manipulated? Because: The political parties are the ones doing the
manipulating. The Senator or Congressman each Party works to elect
receives what that Senator or Congressman wants: The apparent public
power and status and publicity. The Parties get what they want:
Control of the Members of Congress and their votes on legislation. The
party controls candidates via the provision of funds required to run future
winning campaigns. The same is true at the state and county levels.
And that defines the “Shadow Government.”

I have known for many years that both political parties are
corrupt. I believed the only way to get rid of the corruption was from
inside the party. I had to remain a Republican to change the Republican
Party.

I no longer believe that to be true – and here is what I
figured out over the July 4th holiday: If people remove their
names as registered members of any political party, that party’s power is
reduced by each name that is removed. My guess is that if several million
registered Republicans changed their voter registration to “Independent,”
Obamacare would be repealed very quickly and politicians wouldn’t be worrying
about replacement. Replacement will take care of itself when politicians
get penalties of the law out of the way by repealing Obamacare.

“Oh, you can’t do that! You’ll be empowering the
Democrats and we’ll have world government and communism within two years!”

You’re wrong! My moving my voter registration from
Republican to Independent doesn’t change one bit who I can vote for – if I
choose to vote for them (and I won’t hold my nose and vote for another
non-conservative Republican candidate). It’s true that I won’t be able to
vote in Primaries, but I learned a few years ago that the RNC uses funds to
promote one Republican Primary candidate over another — which is against the
rules… but who cares about rules?

How do I know this happened? I know it because one
candidate who is from a tiny town and not well known in Colorado and is not
personally affluent suddenly began advertising day-after-day on one of the most
expensive shows on cable: Bill O’Reilly’s “The Factor.” That money
had to come from the RNC or other special interests. So, I’m really not
losing anything but my right to participate in a stacked deck.

Here’s my message to Republicans: Having watched
Republican Party behavior since 20 January 2017, I’m fairly sure you earned my
rejection by your rejection of my President in violation of the Constitution to
which you swore an Oath.

If you, a Republican elected to office, cannot support the
President those of us support who make you and the Republican Party possible, I
can only say “good bye.” Let’s remove the word “support” from your
dictionary and mine and see who suffers most. (Hint: It won’t be
me.)

Without the people as voters and contributors, political
parties are nothing so I’m going to begin helping them be nothing!
That is, after all, what they are trying to make us.

I say both parties have abused their voter bases so badly
it’s time we take the base away from them. I am removing my registered
support for Republicans for their abuse of President Donald J. Trump. To
them, their egos are more important than the good of their country. And
we’re parting ways because of what appears to be Republican commitment to world
government and war as the primary economic drive. I place more value on
human life — ours and theirs — than that.

The Republican Party knows what the people want. We
elected Donald Trump to be our President. What are establishment
Republicans doing? Every possible thing they can to make our President
fail.

Please remember the following names. They are the
anti-Trump Gang of 22 who way back in March 2016 met at The Cloister, a 5-star
resort on Sea Island, Georgia. Republican voters likely don’t expect much
better behavior from the first 7 names on this list — ending with
neo-conservative expert Karl Rove. We don’t expect much from Kentucky, Ohio,
Nebraska, Michigan, Mexifornia, and certainly not from anyone representing
Washington or Oregon.

I hope voters in those states look at this list and remember
not to contribute one penny to any who are running for office. Republican
voters probably were pretty surprised at Cotton, Gardner, Scott, Brady, Black,
Hensarling, and Price… and Price ends up in Trump’s Cabinet! These
traitors to our Constitution deserve no support.

These are the Republican traitors who are trying to take our
President down and, by taking down a lawfully- elected President, they believe
they can pull off a bloodless coup. Remember them when you buy products
(you can get along without an Apple).

Tim Cook, billionaire
Apple CEO

Larry Page, billionaire
Google co-founder

Sean Parker, billionaire
Napster creator and Facebook investor

Elon Musk, billionaire
Tesla Motors and SpaceX founder

Arthur Sulzberger,
billionaire publisher of The New York Times

Philip Anschutz,
billionaire businessman and GOP donor

Karl Rove

Senate Majority Leader
Sen. Mitch McConnell(R-Ky.)

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)

Sen. Cory Gardner
(R-Colo.)

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.)

Sen. Rob Portman
(R-Ohio)

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.)

Speaker of the House
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.)

Rep. Fred Upton
(R-Mich.)

Rep. Kevin Brady
(R-Texas)

Rep. Kevin McCarthy
(R-Calif.)

Rep. Cathy McMorris
Rodgers (R-Wash.)

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.)

Rep. Jeb Hensarling
(R-Texas)

Rep. Diane Black
(R-Tenn.)

Rep. John Delaney
(D-Md.)

Those swamp denizens in Washington, D.C., have caused me to
lose trust in my government, in the intelligence agencies that are supposed to
keep Americans safe… the FBI, CIA, NSA, and all the rest. Congress can’t
be trusted. I don’t trust the Department of Justice which hired Robert
Mueller to be Special Counsel for the FBI’s Russia investigation. In
turn, Mueller (who has more conflicts of interest in this matter than Bill
Cosby has sex charges filed against him) has hired a dozen
pro-Hillary/ Democrat/ Progressive/ Socialist attorneys to investigate President Trump.
It appears Jeff Sessions has no control over his Department of Justice.
Which Pandora God is Attorney General Sessions serving?

This is my personal Declaration of Independence. I no
longer believe either political party is salvageable. I believe the
greatest power we the people have at this particular moment in time is to walk
away from both political parties. As for me, as of next week, I will
officially be a registered Independent – and I invite you to join me.

Sunday, July 09, 2017

Swamps, Deep States And Core Problems, Part 1

News With Views

Jul 09, 2017

Like most of you,
I have become more and more concerned about the massive criminality of the
swamp animals and other spooky creatures in our nation’s capitol. In
addition to the Swamp, we also have a serious problem called the “Deep
State.” The Swamp and the Deep State overlap but they are different
entities.

We don’t really
know what the Deep State is… just that it’s a group of people (most people say
they are from America’s Intel community… FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.) who are so
arrogant they believe they know better than the millions of voters who put
Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office who should be there – and they don’t think
it should be Trump.

The people who
make up the Deep State have yet to realize their arrogance is the worst form of
tyranny. At the moment they think they are saving us from ourselves… at
least that’s what they tell themselves. That’s what all tyrants tell
themselves and it’s what they tell those they want in servitude to them.
Remember the number one job qualification for spies: Good liar.

Most people
thought that when Candidate Trump said “I’ll clean the swamp” it meant that
President Trump would have to terminate a few bureaucrats and get voters in a
couple of states to retire this Senator or that Representative.

Add to that,
placing good conservatives on the Supreme Court and Senator Sessions as
Attorney General and El Zappo! Done deal! After a few arrests, the
swamp is clean… except wait a minute. What’s this? Jeff Sessions is
allowing Rosenstein to hire Mueller — a man with such obvious and numerous
conflicts of interest when it comes to anything close to the Clintons — to
investigate the Trump Administration’s involvement with Russia! Most of
us are shaking our heads over these appointments. What could “they” have
on Sessions, we wonder?

Cleaning the
swamp requires investigative reporter Clark Kent during the regular business
day and Superman.com after hours. In his active and meaningful attempt to
make America great again, President Donald J. Trump has opened Pandora’s Box
and its unlimited evils… including treason/sedition and other crimes evidently
committed by some very important people.

Rumor has it that
if everyone in elected office were “outed” for a variety of crimes (from drunk
driving to pedophilia to treason), we would lose 80 percent of our
Congress. Is that true? I have no idea – but it would not surprise
me.

Those who know me
well will attest that I think it a waste of time to talk about issues because
issues cannot be solved. Why? Issues are symptoms of problems and
those symptoms change from day-to-day as the disease (problem) gets better,
then worse.

You can ease the
symptoms (issues) for a short time but until the disease (problem) is
accurately diagnosed, treated and cured, it will stay hidden in dark recesses, just
waiting for the right moment to attack again. The problems America has
politically do not require medication. They require extensive surgery.

Trying to solve
issues is exemplified by how physicians have misused antibiotics…
over-prescribing them, e.g. The bacteria morph — changing to avoid being
totally destroyed. Thus symptoms (issues) you thought you’d dealt with
keep reappearing and they get stronger each time they reappear. They no longer
respond to the medication. More and different antibiotics or political
solutions will be prescribed and the patient ends up at death’s door – all
because establishment politicians want to deal with issues rather than go
directly to the core problem and rip it out.

What is our core
problem… the core of the core? A lot of people will likely disagree with me on
this and that’s by ‘God’s Grace… if liberal progressives have their way, no one
will be able to disagree (with them) about anything. They’ll have a
violent riot, call it a protest, get you thrown off campus and bury a point of
view different from their own, so let’s enjoy our disagreements while we
can. It’s called “freedom.”

There have been
television news stories done telling us that Representative Chaffetz sleeps on
a cot in his House of Representatives office at night and in this interview he
discusses how costly it is to buy or rent property in the Washington, D.C.
area. It’s impossible, he says, to maintain two residences for his young
family in two costly cities. He’s not complaining about the pay… just the
expenses involved in running two households.

In this
interview, Representative Chaffetz tells Attkisson why he decided to resign
from Congress. Losing a truly good, honest and intelligent Congressman
like Chaffetz hurts. Badly. He is one of the few totally
trustworthy Constitutional conservatives in the House. He’s exactly the
kind of young man we want to represent us. Chaffetz said he expected that
when Donald Trump became President and Jeff Sessions became Attorney General
things would change. That, according to Chaffetz, did not happen.
In fact, as Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,
Chaffetz says things have gotten worse.

“The reality is,
sadly, I don’t see much difference between the Trump administration and the
Obama administration. I thought there would be this… these floodgates would
open up with all the documents we wanted from the Department of State, the
Department of Justice, the Pentagon. In many ways, it’s almost worse because
we’re getting nothing, and that’s terribly frustrating and with all due
respect, the Attorney General has not changed at all. I find him to be worse
than what I saw with Loretta Lynch in terms of releasing documents and making
things available. I just, that’s my experience, and that’s not what I
expected.”

If you watched
the video linked above, what you heard is a popular Congressman who would be
easily re-elected if he ran… Chaffetz was only six months into his tenth term
of office when he resigned. He’s telling you that he cannot – will not –
tolerate the environment that has been created over the years in Washington,
D.C. by members of the elitist establishment of both political parties.

He’s saying he
has more respect for his time than to spend it in constant effort to raise
money… not for himself, but for the RNC. He’s also saying that he worked
very hard to get Donald Trump elected and expected change that has not yet
come. In fairness to Trump, he has had his hands full with the media war,
Russia, Comey, etc. There is, however, no such excuse for Jeff Sessions
withholding from this important House Committee the files they need to conclude
very old investigations (going back to Fast and Furious).

When you look
closely at what the Chaffetz decision to resign really means, the core problem
of our entire political system emerges.

Representative
Chaffetz spoke truthfully and from the heart in that video. He gave us
his honest reaction to Washington, D.C. He came to the nation’s
capitol and invested ten years of his young life to make things better.
What Chaffetz in essence said is: “If you are a moral, intelligent,
informed and capable human being who wants to help make America the best it can
be, you won’t be able to stay for long because of the swamp in which you must
live.” Those are not the words he used, but if you listen closely that’s
what he said.

There is your
core problem. This is what is wrong with America’s system of
governing. As it is in Western Europe, the established system holds no
appeal to the young, the honest, the intelligent, the moral people who want to
serve America as our founders envisioned. We can thank establishment
leaders from Pelosi and Ryan in the House to Reid and McConnell in the Senate
for the lack of intelligent, moral people who will run for political office
these days. Can you blame them? Listen to Congressman Chaffetz
describe what is expected of him. Is that a life you’d like to
live? Nope… but anyone looking to get their hands on government funds
would.

When something
lacks appeal to honest people, it usually attracts the dishonest. When it
lacks appeal to intelligent people, it attracts the not-so-bright. When
something doesn’t hold appeal to moral people, it will attract the immoral and
the amoral.

I can’t give
anyone advice about finance or politics but in my opinion anyone who sends
money to the RNC or the DNC so they can use your money to “buy” a candidate
they control and who often votes against the better interests of the people is,
in a way, committing suicide. That, I think, makes such a person a MAJOR
part of the problem.

I have stopped
sending funds to State and County political parties, too. Everyone is
angry about the swamp that’s been created – and it exists largely because of
financial support given to the political parties. Better that I send
nothing than provide more money to establishment politicians and the
organizations that do their dirty work for them. That is true whether the
organization is federal, state, county or local, Republican or Democrat.

It’s the American
way to find your own candidates and support them. Understand that we live
in a new world of how to get candidates elected. How many Tweet numbers
do you have? How many email addresses? It doesn’t take money to get
elected today. It takes electronic contacts. The election results
in Atlanta two weeks ago prove that. If money could get a candidate
elected, we would be calling our President “Clinton” today.

If enough of us would
withhold our support and send no money, we would quickly find two political
parties who decided to support us rather than arrogantly expecting us to
support them. Support no candidate just because he or she has an “R” or a
“D” after their name and give what support you give directly to the candidate,
not to a political party.

About Me

Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career in 1956 as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 years (plus) as a banker and bank consultant, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, was U.S. Consulting Editor for Private Banker International (London/Dublin), and other major banking industry publications. Barnewall taught private banking at Colorado University and has authored seven banking books, one dog book, and two works of fiction and one biography.
Barnewall is the former editor of The National Peace Officer Magazine and has written editorials for the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and Newsweek, etc. She has written for News With Views, World Net Daily, Canada Free Press, Christian Business Daily, Business Reform, and others. She has been quoted in Time, Forbes, Wall Street Journal and other national and international publications. She can be found in Who's Who in America (2005-10), Who's Who of American Women (2006-10), Who's Who in Finance and Business (2006-10), and Who's Who in the World (2008).